Education in the AI Age: a Teacher Rethinks Learning & Purpose, w/ Johan Falk of Graspable AI

**Stephen Johnson** (0:00)
This podcast is supported by Google. Hey folks, Stephen Johnson here, co-founder of Notebook LM. As an author, I've always been obsessed with how software could help organize ideas and make connections. So we built Notebook LM as an AI-first tool for anyone trying to make sense of complex information. Upload your documents, and Notebook LM instantly becomes your personal expert on covering insights and helping you brainstorm. Try it at notebooklm.google.com.

**Nathan Labenz** (0:31)
Hello, and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today, just back from the curve in Berkeley, where I had so many amazing conversations that I ended up losing my voice. I'm pleased to share an exploratory conversation about the impact of AI on education. With Johan Falk, author, speaker, and AI analyst based in Stockholm, Sweden, who spent several years as a classroom teacher and at Sweden's National Agency for Education before pivoting to focus on AI in education full-time in the wake of ChantGBT. Today, he's making videos to help teachers use AI in their work and classrooms, which you can find on his new substack, Graspable AI, at graspableai.substack.com.
The context for this conversation is that I was recently invited to give a keynote to an audience of 500 public school administrators in my home state of Michigan, where my kids are now in first grade and preschool in the Montessori program of our neighborhood elementary school. Now in another timeline, I could easily imagine myself being a sort of tiger dad when it comes to my kids' education. But in this timeline, with the long-term outlook for the job market, and frankly the structure of society as a whole subject to such radical uncertainty, I had for the most part been letting my kids be kids, and watching how things develop before committing to a specific strategy for their education. And so, as I've prepared for that talk, including by requesting ChatGPT deep research reports, trying various learning apps for kids, and talking to teachers and principals in my personal network, I've been struck by just how perplexing the challenge that AI presents to educators really is. AI, of course, offers unprecedented access to information and unlimited feedback and one-on-one tutoring, as we learned in our recent episode with Mackenzie Price of Alpha School. And yet, at the same time, it enables cheating like never before and also raises fundamental questions about the very purpose of education itself. To help understand how educators in different contexts around the world are approaching these challenges, I invited Johan on to help me explore the many facets of the relationship between AI and education, and we ended up covering a lot of ground, including what existing research shows about AI's effects on student learning and how the desire to be evidence-based is fundamentally challenged by the pace of change. How different countries, from South Korea to Estonia, are approaching AI adoption in education. What students need to learn about AI itself, including the risks associated with AI friends. How teachers can model a positive approach to AI, including a willingness to explore and make mistakes. Whether the age of grades and standardized tests might soon be coming to an end. How education systems might need to fundamentally reimagine their role in students' lives as economic productivity becomes less relevant, and lots more along the way. While we ended, as we started, with more questions than answers, I found Johan's frameworks extremely helpful for organizing my thinking. And I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging exploration of AI's impact on education. With Johan Falk, author of Graspable AI. Johan Falk, author, speaker, and AI analyst. Welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Johan Falk** (3:43)
Thank you. Thrilled to be here.

**Nathan Labenz** (3:45)
I'm excited for this conversation as well. So you're coming to us from Stockholm, Sweden. And you, like me, have kind of managed to make a full-time job out of trying to keep up with AI, which is something that not too many people have been able to do. So we're in a very privileged, I would say, a small minority who have the luxury of spending so much time really thinking about what matters in this space and trying to translate that to people who do have full-time jobs that keep them from keeping up with all the increasingly dizzying pace of events. For starters, we're obviously primarily going to focus today on the impact of AI on education, although I'm sure there'll be some digressions. But for starters, you want to just kind of introduce yourself, tell us who you are, what do you do, who do you do it for?

**Johan Falk** (4:30)
Yeah, sure. So I have a mixed background. I'm a physicist originally by training.
I also spent three years as a science journalist, web developer, then became a teacher, and finally decided to go into education, which had been longing for a decade or something. I spent a few years as a teacher and then went on to the National Agency for Education here in Sweden, fully engaged in improving mathematics education in this country, which I managed pretty well. And then ChatGPT was launched and everything was turned upside down. I initiated a team at the agency working with AI in education. And after 18 months with that, I decided to leave the education of the agency to focus on AI more broadly, because I think it is such a huge question for the society and the entire world. And right now, I'm looking for a way to have a positive impact on AI risks or AI safety. And running my own business while looking for a way to do that.